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The Role of Emotions in Leadership
and Emotional Transparency
William Kondrath
When I do consulting or training, I sometimes hear lay leaders say: “Our clergy expect too much from us. We’re volunteers and have limited time. We pay our minister to lead programs and do the pastoral visiting.” And from clergy, I often hear: “I regularly preach about the ministry of all the baptized, but I have trouble engaging people in ministry within or outside the congregation.”
If you have been on either side of this conversation, you know the discussion can quickly become bitter or unproductive. Arguments may center on time availability, the role of the clergy and laity, who is getting paid, and in churches, even the theology of baptism and ordination. All this content is important. Sometimes the conversations are constructive, but often people get stuck or the discussion spirals downward. One reason for the negative turn of events is that what hooks people into the conversation often has more to do with their feelings than with the intellectual content of the argument or the behaviors and activities (or lack thereof) of those who are arguing.
How would the conversation be different if the clergyperson began by saying, “I envisioned a mutual ministry in this congregation, and I am sad that that doesn’t seem to be the direction we are heading”? Or “I’m scared that without more people involved in various ministries, the congregation will depend too much on clergy leadership, and if I try to do it all by myself, I will burnout or become resentful.”
Similarly, what if a member of the congregation said, “I’d like to be more active as a leader, but I don’t feel empowered and equipped for leadership, and I am scared that people will think I’m trying to take over where I don’t belong”?
How would our conversations with one another be different if we were to notice and name our own feelings, and honor the feelings of others, when we engage in intellectual arguments or discussions about what needs to be done? The goal of emotional competence is to illustrate how taking feelings seriously, and including them in discussions, will improve your leadership and decision making and help you develop and promote deeper relationships. Many leaders have significant cognitive abilities and behavioral skills. The purpose of increasing affective competence is to help you increase your capacity to understand and use your feelings—which are always in the room, too often like the proverbial elephant—to deepen community and engage more fully in God’s mission.
For nearly twenty years, I have been working with a paradigm called “Feelings as Messengers.” This theory posits that feelings are responses to stimuli and that they “contain” messages about what we need in a given situation. Recently Alban Insitute published Facing Feelings in Faith Communities.[1] This work offers spiritual, psychological, and scriptural foundations for trusting and utilizing your God-given feelings. I discuss six primary feelings (fear, anger, sadness, peace, power or agency, and joy)[2] and where you are likely to notice them in your body, as well as the messages that accompany these feelings.
Because some of us have difficulty noticing or naming our feelings, Facing Feelings in Faith Communities is filled with art, scripture, and poetry so that you can actually experience these feelings, I hope without the contamination you may have received as a child, when you might have learned or been told that some feelings are more important than others. It also explains the theory of substitution of feelings. Simply put, this theory suggests that most of us, at a very early age, learned to substitute an acceptable feeling for one that was prohibited or not valued by our family of origin. Because the feeling that was congruent with our experience was banned or discounted, we put on or enacted a feeling that our family system deemed okay, even if we knew it didn’t really fit what we were experiencing. The cost of such a substitution is that many of us are not easily able to understand what we are really feeling, and we are thus less likely to receive from others what we need or want. Unfortunately, such substitution patterns become habits and, over time, we may not notice that we are expressing an emotion that does not fit our current situation.
As you prepare for the 2014 Annual Meeting and during our gathering, I invite you to be aware of how your feelings invite you more deeply into connection with God, yourself, and others. You might also consider how each of us is socialized to express our feelings and the role our gender plays in what feelings we are comfortable expressing. You might also consider how some faith communities exhibit a primary orientation as a joyful, peaceful or powerful community or as a fearful, sad, or angry congregation. In other words, expand your reflections to include how feelings operate on corporate level—how systems take on a particular feeling tone or character.
To assist you in this exploration, please consult the “Feelings as Messengers Chart” (below). Underlying the chart is the theory that a feeling or feelings arise in response to a stimulus, and that each of the primary feelings contains or is accompanied by a message that tells you what you need or what possible responses you might wish to make. Paying attention to the feeling and the message helps you make better decisions and helps keep you connected to yourself and others. In other words, paying attention to feelings, helps you be a better leader. As you look at the chart, it may help to picture this pattern: stimulusàfeelingàmessageàneed or response.
Obviously, this approach to feelings, or affective competence, is only one approach. I hope our time together will surface other models and critique this one. I present this approach as a way to begin our exploration.
A Word about Transparency
As a teacher and consultant, I often speak about open systems. Or I hear students or clients talk about the desire for more transparent leadership. Usually they mean leaders should not have hidden goals or motives. Sometimes the conversation is about underlying, hidden assumptions and the value of making them clear to all parties. I would label this desire for openness cognitive transparency. In contrast, rarely do people express a desire to speak about hidden feelings in these conversations about transparency. And yet my experience has been that when leaders hide their feelings from other staff members, co-workers, volunteers, parishioners, or clients, the waters get ever murkier than when assumptions, goals, and rationales are hidden or unexplained. And the confusion or obstruction happens more rapidly when feelings are hidden or opaque than when cognitive assumptions are hidden or ideas are unclear. Obviously, this is not an either-or situation. In many cases, assumptions, goals, and motives are hidden as well as feelings. However, I believe that the technology most groups employ in exposing assumptions, goals, and leadership theory and practice is much more developed and accessible than the technology for articulating feelings and examining how they affect our relationships and our work. The work of gaining and teaching affective competence is an attempt to help individuals and groups move toward greater affective transparency.[3]
By reading, reflecting upon, and, most importantly, discussing these applications with others, you will become more affectively competent as a leader or participant in ministry. Affective competence will also enhance your relationships with family and friends as you fully utilize all the capacities God has given you. As you become more affectively competent, you might also experience less fear or have a greater capacity to reduce your fear by seeking support, and thus have more desire and ability to be affectively transparent.
As you prepare for our April gathering, and when we actually meet with one another, I hope you will give yourself permission to breathe in the feelings you experience, the feelings evoked in the situations by what you read, and by what you hear. The greatest benefit from our interactions will come when you can experience the feelings that arise, when we name them to one another and explore them together.
In summary, my hope is that we will, together, gain better access to our God-given emotional software. This software, through often subtle or ignored changes in our bodies, allows us to apprehend messages that assist us in navigating life and relationships. Developing the capacity to notice and read our feelings increases the chances that we will know what we need or want. As we express our feelings more clearly, other people are more likely to respond in ways that are helpful to us, thus enhancing our relationships and the work we might be engaged in together.
Appendix
Feelings as Messengers Chart
Feeling / Stimulus / Message / Need or ResponseFear / Real or perceived danger / There is danger.
I am threatened or in peril.
I find new ideas and relationships scary. / I need to get safe.
I need protection, support, or reassurance for trying new behaviors
or ways of being.
Anger / Real or perceived violation / There is a violation.
My boundaries have been crossed.
My expectations have been smashed. / I need to set limits,
to reestablish boundaries,
to renegotiate expectations.
Sadness / Real or anticipated loss / There is a loss.
I am experiencing or anticipating bereavement.
I liked things the way they were. / I need comfort, space, or support to grieve, remember, and let go (as appropriate).
Peace / Deep awareness of connectedness / I am centered.
I am connected to God and myself (and others). / I need to continue to be focused, centered, or connected.
Power or Agency / Accomplishment or anticipated success / I am competent.
I am able. / I need to continue to foster my own competence and to empower others.
Joy / Inner gratitude, awe, wonder / I am excited, happy. / I need to continue to relish the joy and share it as appropriate.
Adapted with permission from a VISIONS-Inc. training tool (www.visions-inc.org). See also William Kondrath, God’s Tapestry: Understanding and Celebrating Differences (Alban Institute, 2008). Also William Kondrath, Facing Feelings in Faith Communities (Alban Institute, 2013).
Notes
[1] Alban Institute, 2013, also available in Nook, Kindle, and I-Book.
[2] Facing Feelings in Faith Communities also includes a chapter on the more complicated emotions of shame and guilt. While they differ from the primary emotions, for most of us these emotions play a significant role in our lives.
[3] In addition to cognitive and affective transparency, I also talk about power transparency. Sometimes I think of this as behavioral transparency—following a learning-change model with cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions. See William M. Kondrath, God’s Tapestry: Understanding and Celebrating Differences (Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 2008), 79. One might also think of this threefold transparency in reference to the communication domains (meaning, affect, and power) articulated by systems psychologist, organizational consultant, and clinical researcher David Kantor in Reading the Room: Group Dynamics for Coaches and Leaders (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012), 9.